


Vanilla Twilight

by inabodycastofglass



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Art, College, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6482899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabodycastofglass/pseuds/inabodycastofglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only one thing is missing from Nathanael's university life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vanilla Twilight

**Author's Note:**

> A request by an anon on tumblr.

Nathanael thought a prestigious art university in another country would be good for him.

And it was, most of the time.

But it was hard, harder than he’d anticipated. He was completely alone, in a country where he didn’t speak the language, and many of the natives didn’t like French people. So he had a lot of trouble making friends, more so than normal.

And he had expectations put on him for the first time ever. And that was stressful. After his first week of classes, after everything he’d ever made was torn to shreds, after he was told how talentless he was, he’d had a breakdown in his dorm. He’d even packed his stuff, ready to leave.

But he’d calmed down, of course. He was there for a reason. And he had to be good enough to be there; he’d been accepted, after all.

After a couple months he began to find his way in his new world. He began to notice real improvement in his work, the kind he’d never seen before. And he fell in naturally with some other people, finding common ground with other painters.

Things were good for him. Better than they’d ever been before. And he was happy.

There was only one thing missing.

Marinette.

He thought he’d be over her by now. He thought when he got out on his own, more into the next phase of his life, he’d be ready to like someone else. Everyone else was moving on. Several people had even flirted with him.

But he always thought of her and and stopped himself from joining in.

She found her way into his art, into his fingertips, encasing him inside a shell of her.

He thought of her late into the night, until he gave up on sleep and pulled out his paints, opening his window so he was filled with the sounds of the howling wind and the pounding rain he’d long since gotten used to, and he filled another canvas with her face.

He wanted to call her one day around the end of the first semester, when he reaised he can’t afford to go home for the break, and the cold had filled his body, a chill in his bones. He has her number. She gave it to him before he left, when they promised to keep him in contact. But it would seem strange now, after they’d gone so long in silence. So he turned his phone off and tossed it in his bed and headed to the studio to work on his final project.

His paintings were chosen to represent the freshman class in that years showcase. His paintings of Marinette. So that was how he spent his second semester.

It was a relief to have an excuse to think about her, to let her eyes and her voice and her laughter fill every nook and cranny of his mind like a drug, instead of trying to shove her out. He could just let himself love her.

It was then that he noticed how his art took off. Before, he could feel something when he looked at it. There was a pull in his chest, and an ache at the base of his throat.

When he looked at these new paintings, it was like an explosion. It through his body against a wall. It tore him apart from the inside. It made his entire being scream.

When other people looked at them, he could see it in their faces. He could see it in the way the smiled, the way their eyes brightened, or the way they filled with tears. He could see it in the way their breath picked up, and in the way they held it. He could see it in the way they placed their hands gently on their chests.

People were finally seeing Marinette through his eyes. And it made him feel lighter.

It was on a morning around the end of the year, only days before the showcase, as he sat outside his favourite cafe, waiting for it to open, and staring at the rare clear dawn sky, imagining how it would look as a backdrop, that his phone vibrated, and he saw her name on the screen.

Three pictures were inside the text.

The first was Marinette with a dress on a mannequin. 

Seeing her, the real her, not the images he’d created, but her, made his heart skip. Every line of her was sharp. Her eyes, her jaw, her lips. She’d always been soft, but she wasn’t made of paint and brush strokes. She was real. So very real. And he wondered if he could ever capture that.

The second picture was Juleka, her face serious as she applied lipstick to a woman Nathanael didn’t know.

The third was the three of them, standing together, grinning at the camera as Marinette held it out at arm length.

Below them was a message:

Preparing for the first fashion show. Hoping your year is going as well as ours.

He smiled at his phone and hit the reply button.

It is. I’ll be back in Paris in two weeks.

He put the phone back in his pocket as the cafe opened, taking one last look at the sky, memorizing the colours. He had one last painting to do.


End file.
